Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Solving the Synoptic Problem: Investigating Gospel Harmony Theories            The three Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they share many of the same stories in a similar sequence and even sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is largely distinct who often different in these details. For simplicity’s sake, despite the Gospel authors being unknown, they will be referred to by their traditional names. As shown in the diagram above, the three synoptic Gospels share similar information about the life of Jesus. Statistically. over three-quarters of Mark’s content is found in both Matthew and Luke, and 97% of Mark is found in at least one of the other two synoptic gospels. Furthermore, 23% of Matthew and 23% of Luke have material in common that is not found in Mark. The question of how these 3 Gospels share the same information so closely while being written at di...

Notes of the Overview of the Early Church Fathers: On the Trinity and Incarnation      In our exploration of early Christian thought, our focus is directed towards understanding the evolving perspectives on the Trinity and the Incarnation as articulated by influential figures within the Church such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian, Origen of Alexandria, Athanasius, and others, thus providing a comprehensive understanding of the theological landscape that shaped Christianity during its nascent stages. While I cannot go over all the early church fathers since that would take up the length of the book, investigating these influential individuals who are mostly saints will have to suffice. This will also ignore early modalist theologians (who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were one person and modes of God), gnostic theologians (who believed in many gods and that Jesus was not a human), and Jewish-christian th...

Hidden Nestorianism: Unveiling the Orthodox Dilemma of The Two Sons Worry     The Oxford English Dictionary defines Nestorianism as “The doctrine of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople (appointed in 428), by which Christ is asserted to have had distinct human and divine persons.” Nestorian Christology promotes the concept of a prosopic union of two persons that are divine and human in Jesus Christ, thus trying to avoid and replace the concept of a hypostatic union. This Christological position is defined as radical Dyophysitism, and differs from orthodox Dyophysitism, or that Christ was one divine person with two natures, which was reaffirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Such teachings brought Nestorius into conflict with other prominent church leaders, most notably Cyril of Alexandria, who issued 12 anathemas against him. Nestorius’ teachings were deemed heretical at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and again at the Council of Chalcedon. The early church fathers belie...